BEST OF 2008!

Well, it's been a pretty long year, what with school, girlfriend, work, moving, and a very disturbed sleep schedule. But, I have been able to keep my eye on a bunch of awesome new things to have come out this year. So, without much more introduction, here's the top 3 best of multiple categories of 2008.

BEST NEW ALBUMS OF 2008
3.Protest the Hero - "Fortress"

I became a fan of this band as soon as I heard their previous release, Kezia. This is a group of extremely talented musicians writing EXTREMELY talented music. One noticeable aspect of this band is the unique use of vocals on top of the incongruent guitar style. The voice is reminiscent of almost a whiny, pop-punk at time, to anywhere around power metal, and even black metal at times.
Kezia showed how talented these guys were technically, but 2008's Fortress showed just how flexible and creative these fella's are. The whole album is constantly on the border of multiple genres, and is never dissappointing. Tracks like Bloodmeat, the Dissentience, and Goddess Bound carry the same feel as the original Kezia, but a tad more involved and technical, while tracks like Sequoia Throne and Palms Read rely more on a modern Progressive Metal feel as found in bands like Dream Theater and Between the Buried and Me (more of the latter). Great production, great mastering - a very fun album to listen to entirely. Definitely a fantastic album, and definitely deserving of being on the top 3 of 2008.

2.Bohren und der Club of Gore - "Dolores"

For those of you who are not aware of this band, they are a Doom Jazz outfit from Germany. A very dark band, focusing a lot on suspension and silence, utilizing very few and powerful instruments, the band consisting of drums, bass, keyboards, and a very airy saxophone. Bohren is known for writing songs that are long, and usually very unsettling in their environment, usually leaving the listener very vulnerable. They have been known to perform in complete darkness on stage, wearing only white glow-in-the-dark gloves while the rest of their bodies are shrouded in black. A very depressing and solemn band, for sure.
Dolores, on the other hand, is not nearly as scary or dark as it's predecessors, but is instead astoundingly sad, focusing on slightly faster melodies, but with a specific tamber that you can only describe as heart-breaking. This album is, of course, very beautiful in composition and production. Really, any album that can force a listener into a certain state of mind or emotion is a true work of art, and should be recognized as such. This is a wonderful album.

1. Opeth - "Watershed"


Opeth is one of my very favorite bands, so therefore I had HUGE expectations for this album. Oddly enough, none of them were met... They were changed(?). See, I am used to the Opeth most people are familiar with - Insanely heavy riffs, 6/8 time signatures, E-minor, and Mikael Akerfeldt's signature death growl. So, when Watershed was released I was expecting to hear all of those signature sounds that made Opeth one of my favorite bands. However, this was not the case. Heavy keyboards, mellotron, jazz compositions, and nearly 75% of the album is clean, and fantastic, singing.
What?
See, this album is a perfect example of a metal album being influenced by everything BUT other metal albums. Mikael Akerfeldt states that he was very influenced by an artist named Scott Walker, not too mention Mikael's consistant tuning into the Zombies, when making this album. Sure enough it made for a very interesting sonic experience. The production is the best it's been since Steven Wilson stopped with Blackwater Park, along with astounding performances by Opeth's two newest members, Martin "Axe" Axenroth (of Bloodbath fame) and Fredrik Akkeson (formerly of Arch Enemy). I was one of the many Opeth fans who feared the departure of Martin Lopez and Peter Lindgren, believing that the band would never be as strong as they once were with those two behind the scenes. Fortunately, I was proven very, very wrong.
And Jeph Jaques can go to Hell. The use of mellotron is not only appropriate, but stylistic of progressive rock as a whole. Sure, Opeth can afford to pay musicians to play organic flute on an album, but why not have it be something that fits sonically and genre-specifically, and that can also be preformed live everytime.
Watershed, though still not the best of Opeth's many albums, is an amazing album. Opeth has still shown that they are at the forefront of what is acceptable as metal, always pushing the boundary as to what people recognize as within the genre. This album is worthy of the title of Best Album of 2008.

Honorable Mentions
Utada Hikaru - "HEART STATION"
Deerhoof - "Offend Maggie"
Meshuggah - "Obzen"
Kayo Dot - "Blue Lambency Downward"
This or the Apocalypse - "Monuments"
An Albatross - "The An Albatross Family Album"
YMCK - "Family Genesis"
Becoming the Archetype - "Dichotomy"
Genghis Tron - "Board Up the House"
Powerglove - "Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man"
There are still about a hundred other awesome ablums that came out this last year, but these are the ones I'm going to mention... and that's it.


BEST NEW MOVIES OF 2008

3.WALL-E



American animation nowadays seems to be lacking a lot of substance. Cartoons on TV tend to be based solely on ADD, having an attention span of maybe 2 seconds, lots of loud noises, little artistic detail. Blah. The folks at Pixar animation, however, have proven themselves once again as masters of animation with this years sci-fi family film, Wall-e. John Lasseter, head honcho over at Pixar, is a big fan of Japanese film maker and animator Hayao Miyazaki, Miyazaki having produced some of the greatest films and cartoons of all time - Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away), Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) and Kaze no tani no Naushikaa (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind). Miyazaki's films focus a lot more on story, character developement, and detail detail detail. There are a few times where you sort of forget that you are watching an animated film when witnessing one of these titles, what with how emotionally attached you become to the characters and just how real they are. Lasseter, being a fan of Miyazaki, has aspired to be similar in his attempts at animation, having produced most of the Pixar films to date.
What these CG films by Pixar have over the rest of American animation today are there grips on human detail - even if the protagonist is in fact a little robot. Love and humor seem so real and natural in these films, something that you just don't see in the majority of cartoons. The audience instantly becomes attached to Wall-e as soon as he utters his first line of dialogue, and watch every single frame with great wonder and amusement, hoping that he will in fact get the girl in the end. Ah, Robot love...

2.Cloverfield

I guess what made this movie so good was not the film itself, which was pretty good, but was instead the hype that was built up around it. Cloverfield was first exposed as a teaser before the Transformers flop last year, and ended up being the only thing I really got excited about the rest of the night. An American big monster film, and they wouldn't even give you the title. Virtually no information was available on the film, so anything people could find out was based on hearsay and rumor, further perpetuated by the internet. Obviously, nothing that was surmised was correct about the film, but that's what made it even better when it was finally released.
Cloverfield was the brainchild of J.J. Abrams, the man responsible for shows like LOST, Alias, and Fringe, and is certainly known for his ways of mystery. The fact that the movie didn't even have a name until about four months before its release was awesome. For about 6 months people knew the movie only by the date that it was to be released - 1.18.08. Genius. Simple and Genius. The movie ended up being pretty visually stunning, though a little lacking in the whole acting department. Still, it was quite a "ride" I guess, and I think earns its spot as number two simply upon the mass hysteria it created as a nameless movie so early in the game.

1.The Dark Knight


I know, I know, you all saw this one coming from a mile away. But, I have to admit, this one really caught me off guard. I haven't watched much Batman since I was a little guy wearing the caped crusader on my huggies, but I've certainly been stoked on some of the films based on his antics. The first two were great. The next two... not so much. But then Chris Nolan came along, and the game changed. The feel was different, the music was different, and of course, Batman was different. However, no one could deny that Christian Bale fit perfectly as the Bat, and he was back with some kind of bizarre vengeance.
But, of course, the real star of the newest Batman film is Heath Deadger. Ledger first popped on the screen with Terrible films like 10 Things I Hate About You and... ugh... A Knights Tale, proving that he was very prone to doing dumb, dumb things. But, then he started doing REAL films, and all of a sudden people found out that not only could he actually ACT, but he could do it extremely well. I admit, I was reserved when I heard that he was going to be the next Joker in the upcoming Batman film... but after watching it I understood what a perfect decision it was to have him play the single craziest villain comics have ever known. There are those who method act, and then there are those who live their characters, and Heath was certainly the latter. The slip into insanity was blatantly apparent while watching his performance throughout the film. It really is unfortunate that he had to die after the completion of the film. He was truly a perfect addition to the legacy of Batman, and all of Film. Blah blah blah, sentiment, blah. HERE'S THE NUMBER 1! w00t!



Honorable Mentions:
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
Run, Fatboy, Run
.... um, I guess I didn't watch too many movies this last year...